There are some well-intentioned people – both in Santa Fe and elsewhere – who support the BDS “movement” because they believe it will help bring about peace. Are you one of them? If you are, understand that you are actually harming any peaceful options, rather than helping. Read on…
BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. This “movement” would ban individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments from engaging with Israel in 3 ways:
- boycott – as a primary boycott: withdraw or not engage with (whether commerce, cultural, academic, or social) any Israeli company, university, non-profit, artists, governmental agency, etc.; and as a secondary or tertiary boycott: not engage with companies and artists/universities that are not Israeli, but do business with Israel.
- divest from – remove Israeli companies and any companies doing business with Israel from investment portfolios, or terminate any financial packages with them, and
- sanction – place restrictions on, punish or in other ways penalize individuals, universities, organizations/companies, or countries that have an association with Israel.
But the purpose of the BDS Movement is not Peace
Some think that BDS, like the boycott of South Africa before the abolition of apartheid, would lead to peace. This is not true for several reasons:
(1) BDS leaders don’t hide their real intentions – the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. How do we know this is the ultimate purpose of the BDS “Movement”? Because the leading supporters of BDS are explicit:
The destruction of Israel as a Jewish state would not be acceptable to the great majority of Israelis in any form; backing BDS is not just unlikely to enhance peace efforts, but actually reduces Palestinian willingness to negotiate because they think the BDS pressure will give them more bargaining leverage.
(2) BDS leaders discourage “normalization.” While BDS leaders manufacture “facts” about the Palestinian conflict with Israel, and spread propaganda throughout the West (and their own people) by encouraging unrealistic demands of Israel – demanding an understanding of a Palestinian “narrative” which often denies any relationship between Jews and the Land of Israel – they also vilify any Palestinians who want to engage with Israelis in discussion and collaboration on scientific, industrial, and cultural exchanges as a way of encouraging joint understanding.
The accusation of “collaboration” is a charged one, leading to Palestinians shunning, and even threatening physical harm to other Palestinians.^ Hence, by encouraging world isolation of Israel the BDS movement has no intention of permitting understanding of the Israeli “narrative.” Efforts such as Creativity for Peace in Santa Fe are at risk.* There are many other examples where de-normalization has negatively impacted Palestinians.+
(3) BDS leaders discourage Palestinian economic development. Many diplomats, economists, conflict resolution experts, and others believe economic development is a way to mitigate anger and tensions as populations are lifted into the middle class, encouraging self-interest rather than ideological hate. If BDS’ encouragement of economic isolation and de-normalization causes West Bank job losses, the bulk of disappearing jobs would be lost work for Palestinians: approximately two-thirds of jobs created by “disputed territory” Jewish activities go to Palestinians, who are typically paid 2-3 times wages they’d be paid if employed by Palestinian employers.
Currently about 38,000 Palestinians work in Israel and Israeli-related settlements. If the BDS movement were successful most would lose their jobs. And Israeli exporters provide markets for Palestinian goods: for example, since 2010 Carmel Agrexco has exported hundreds of tons of Palestinian produce from Gaza to Europe, even as Hamas continues to wage war against Israel, and groups such as Adalah-NY call for boycotting Carmel Agrexco. Go figure.
(4) BDS’ misleads when it analogizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with South Africa. There is a lot of literature on how the analogy doesn’t work. Instead of redacting that literature here, we refer the reader to one of several excellent analyses here (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), here (New York Times op-ed), and here (Ynet news interview with International Committee of the Red Cross).
Suppose I just boycott “occupied territories” goods?
No, just boycotting “occupied territories” (or, more accurately, “disputed territories”) products doesn’t promote peace, but the opposite – it discourages understanding, distances the populations, reduces contact between the disputants, and results in poorer economic outcomes. SodaStream was hounded out of the disputed territories (Ma’ale Adumim, a suburb of Jerusalem) and moved to the Negev desert. SodaStream survived, thrived, and was purchased by Pepsi-Cola for almost $2 billion this year. But 500 Palestinians lost their jobs because of the BDS movement. How does that promote peace and understanding?
The other problem is trying to tease apart what products/services add value to any particular final product exported by Israel. This is similar to trying to determine US manufacturing components to US cars and trucks, cell phones, etc.
Most Palestinians who live in the disputed territories don’t support BDS
The Electronic Intifada is a notoriously anti-Israel and anti-Semitic website edited by Ali Abunimah, who was brought to Santa Fe 2 years ago by the Lannan Foundation as moderator for Gideon Levy.
Here’s what this virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic website said about Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2013:
“No we do not support the boycott of Israel…”
Another Palestinian leader, Bassem Eid, at the European Union as recently as September, 2018, said: (Eid came to Santa Fe in 2016, sponsored by SFMEW. You can hear his talk here.)
Speaking at the EU Parliament in Brussels, the Jerusalem-based Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid criticized Europe for turning a blind eye, for centuries, to the economic plight of Gaza, saying that “dignity can be achieved only via economic prosperity.” Accusing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement of “trying to use the Palestinians in order to gain power and money,” Eid said that if Europe cut its funding, like Trump was cutting the funding of UNRWA, the BDS movement would cease to exist within six months. Europe should give the money directly to the Palestinians, he said, adding that the slogans uttered by BDS members that short-term suffering was necessary in order to gain long-term benefits were similar to slogans uttered by Arab leaders in 1948. He also criticized the Palestinian Authority for preventing activists from participating in coexistence events. Eid’s statements were posted on his YouTube channel on September 5, 2018.
If you still think the BDS movement is well-intentioned, note that the US software company that permits fundraising for the BDS movement just blocked the BDS’ account because of allegations of its links to designated terrorist bodies. These allegations were made by Shurat HaDin. According to the Associated Press:
The [Shurat HaDin] complaint noted that the boycott movement’s membership includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (PNIF), an umbrella committee whose members include the Hamas terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
“US fundraising site suspends BDS account over alleged terror ties” Times of Israel, December 21, 2018
All three of those groups have been classified as terrorist organizations by the U.S. Similarly, they have all launched attacks to murder Israeli civilians, including a drive-by shooting attack last week during which a Palestinian shot a pregnant Israeli woman, among several others.
At only 30 weeks, the woman’s baby was born in an emergency c-section, but died four days later.
So, if you support BDS in some form, or have friends/relatives who think it’s OK to do so, let them know that they are stoking the conflict, not promoting peace, perpetuating myths, and furthering the causes of terrorist organizations. Point them to learn more at this page, our sfmew.org/bds page, and by attending SFMEW’s presentation by Asaf Romirowsky on January 6.
Footnotes:
Bassem Eid stated at the European Parliament conference: “I must tell you that there are tens of Palestinian businessmen who received an invitation to participate in this conference, and in the last 48 hours they regret to participate, because they received threats from the intelligence forces of the Palestinian Authority. We used to be tens sitting here, on this stage, to speak about the economic situation. But, unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority is trying to fight any kind of cooperation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, because the interest of the Palestinian Authority is how to keep the Palestinians suffering. By suffering only we can rule them.”
*Here is an indication of the problem, from the Santa Fe New Mexican, July 29, 2018:
Ameera, now a teacher from the West Bank town of Ramallah who asked that only her first name be published because she fears retribution back home, is the Palestinian coordinator for Creativity for Peace, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit that has offered a summer camp for Middle Eastern teenage girls for the past 20 years.
Other examples this author has experienced in the past:
1. The attempt to form a joint Israeli-Palestinian venture capital fund after the Oslo Accords were signed ended when the potential Palestinian partners were threatened with death and harm to their families if they proceeded.
2. Hadassah Medical Center’s public health school for years filled free-ride (tuition and board) for Palestinian PhD students – 20 slots were maintained and were competitively filled from hundreds of applicants. When BDS started in the mid-2000s the number of applicants dropped dramatically, to the point where a couple of years ago only 2 of the 20 slots were filled with courageous Palestinians willing to weather the threats of harm because they are “consorting with the enemy [Israelis].”
3. A sewage treatment center proposed for the Kidron Valley has yet to be built (after 2 decades of planning, and even with funding obtained) because of Palestinian demands that it control the whole enterprise, and that East Jerusalem Jews not be allowed to be hooked up to the system.
SFMEW is thankful to be a beneficiary organization of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.